Indemnified

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Provided with monetary compensation for loss, damage, or injury
2. Made financially whole by covering expenses or damages incurred
3. Given reimbursement or protection against financial harm or liability

Etymology: "Indemnified" is the past tense of "indemnify," and the verb's history is a tangle of two Latin roots that got merged along the way. One root is "indemnis," meaning "unhurt" or "free from loss," built from "in-" (not) and "damnum" (loss, damage). The other is "damnify," an English verb meaning "to injure or wrong," which itself came from Latin "damnificare," to cause loss. Over time, English speakers blended these, so the prefix "in-" seems to point toward "into" in the second version, even though the verb's sense of protecting against harm owes more to the unhurt root. The verb's core idea is compensation. To indemnify someone is to make sure they are protected against a loss, or to repay them for one. That is why the word feels financial today: insurance contracts, for example, promise to indemnify policyholders for covered damage. The "-ify" ending, from Latin "-ificare," simply turns the adjective into a verb meaning "to make" or "to secure" something in that state.

Synonyms: compensated, reimbursed, repaid, restituted, protected

Antonyms: penalized, fined, forfeited, deprived, neglected